Unknown Lamer - Slashdot User

Private companies on UK government deals 'should be subject to FoI'-> 0

Submitted by Qedward on Wednesday May 16, @07:11AM

Qedward writes "A report from the Public Accounts Committee suggested the scope of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) should be extended to cover private firms and IT companies that work on government contracts.

All follows on from deputy PM Nick Clegg's vow to allow citizens to "hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account — and not only the government".

Of course they should, but what they'll find out will probably only make the UK public more despairing."
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LinuxMint13 RC is available for testing 0

Submitted by donadony on Wednesday May 16, @05:58AM

donadony writes "LinuxMint13 RC is available for testing, this release comes with2 versions in a separated dvd`s: Mate and Cinnamon. For LinuxMint13 Cinnamon, apart of being very light offers some customization and integration of new applets, extensions and themes that can be found on the official website of Cinnamon."

CPU competition heating up in 2012?-> 0

Submitted by

jd

on Wednesday May 16, @04:29AM

jd writes "2012 promises to be a fun year for hardware geeks, with three new "Aptiv-class" MIPS64 cores being circulated in soft form, a quad-core ARM A15, a Samsung ARM A9 variant, a seriously beefed-up 8-core Intel Itanium and AMD's mobile processors. There's a mix here of chips actually out, ready to be put on silicon, and in last stages of development. Obviously these are for different users (mobile CPUs don't generally fight for marketshare with Itanium dragsters) but it is still fascinating to see the differences in approach and the different visions of what is important in a modern CPU.

Combine this with the news reported earlier on the DDR4, and this promises to be a fun year with many new machines likely to appear that are radically different from the last generation.

Which leaves just one question — which Linux architecture will be fully updated first?"
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Psychedelic Star Trails and City Lights From Orbit-> 0

Submitted by

astroengine

on Tuesday May 15, @01:23PM

astroengine writes "Streaks of psychedelic colors show the passage of cities below the International Space Station (ISS), airglow in Earth's atmosphere and the circling motion of stars in this stunning new image from Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit. Pettit created the image by combining 18 long-exposure digital images taken with a camera mounted inside the ISS on March 16, 2012. Because of the limitations of digital imaging sensors, multiple exposures are needed to get such an image."
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OpenNIC Launches dotPirate TLD-> 0

Submitted by

ktetch-pirate

on Tuesday May 15, @01:52AM

ktetch-pirate writes "As the US Govt. seizes domains willy nilly, and ICANN demands hundreds of thousands of dollars for vanity TLD's, it's hard to remember that they're not the only game in town. Alternate DNS group OpenNIC had added another TLD to their offerings, with the launch this weekend of the .pirate TLD"
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Photographers, you're being replaced by software-> 0

Submitted by Mrs. Grundy on Monday May 14, @04:14PM

Mrs. Grundy writes "CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and easy-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?"
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Comment: Re:Laugh (Score 1) 399

by Unknown Lamer on Thursday May 10, @01:18AM (#39950785) Attached to: Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop

I think you're underestimating how pleasant it is to kick back on a deck chair and churn out some code for a few hours. I have one of those old core2 whatever low voltage laptops with a 13" screen (eh, every 15" had the same resolution... and I made the mistake of buying a 17" monstrosity before), and it really is nice not being tethered to a desk (for 6+ hours of heavy use even).

Of course, in small screen editing mode I'll have a full screen Emacs frame (~270x96 characters isn't too shabby and can house 3 or 4 windows comfortably) with a tiny font and spread things out onto more desktops so it's only a bit less convenient.

But then I have a 24" monitor, clickety keyboard, and trackball sitting on my desk.

ESA Declares End of Mission for Envisat-> 0

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09, @11:40AM

An anonymous reader writes "Just weeks after celebrating its tenth year in orbit, communication with the Envisat satellite was suddenly lost on 8 April. Following rigorous attempts to re-establish contact and the investigation of failure scenarios, the end of the mission is being declared."
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Queen's Speech 2012 at-a-glance: Bill-by-bill-> 0

Submitted by

TheGift73

on Wednesday May 09, @08:21AM

TheGift73 writes "By far the most controversial bill discussed in The Queens speech today has to be the 'Draft Communications Bill' which will allow the police and intelligence agencies to collect data on communications, like texts and emails, flexible to changes in technology, such as the internet. This will apply UK wide.

The Queen's Speech has set out the government's legislative plans for the next year. Here are details of what is in it:"
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White House Threatens Veto Over NASA Commercial Crew Funding-> 0

Submitted by FleaPlus on Wednesday May 09, @03:31AM

FleaPlus writes "This week the White House issued a veto threat over the Commerce/Justice/Science spending bill currently being debated by the House of Representatives, in large part due to its cut to commercial crew funding. The current House bill decreases NASA's overall budget and commercial crew spending while increasing spending on the shuttle-legacy SLS rocket. Language in the House bill also tells NASA to end the ongoing milestone-based competitive development in the commercial crew program, and to instead switch to a single provider using 'traditional government procurement methods.'"
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